issue no. 11: on lighting
Is it really better in the dark?
The second volume of Love and Other Rugs is presented by Kaiyo.
throwing shade(s).
Love and Other Rugs is BACK… If you are new, be sure to check out the archive. I complain about ghosting and grey sofas and exes in storage units, among other things. Plus, limited copies of the print issue are available online.
About a year ago, maybe it’s two at this point, I went to The River—a cocktail bar located just below Canal street—to meet a self-proclaimed Peter Pan. At the bar (designed by the husband of Emily Bode), there are saloon doors, an array of mezcal cocktails, and the number for a cab company printed in the back of the menu. I was grabbing drinks with a founder, one of the three archetypes of men I seem to gravitate towards. For the record (and for any single men reading this), the big three are: founders, chefs, and corn-fed-midwesterners—if you are a midwestern chef that has a start-up, maybe we are soulmates.
Anyway, when I got to the bar, I didn’t totally know if it was a date. I do this more often than acceptable, you see, when you flirt with everyone it's hard to know the difference. Maybe its for for self-preservation, no one can reject you if you weren’t even sure if the arrangement was romantically inclined in the first place. And while we had kissed once six months before, this time we were meeting to talk about business school. Plus, he had a flight to Europe the next day. I still wore a small heel.
He showed up wearing a backpack, not a date. We split cocktails, date. We talked about the GMAT for 20 minutes, not a date. We kissed outside Scarr’s Pizza while I still had garlic on my face, okay fine, it was definitely a date.
Two things about the encounter stuck out to me. The first was how utterly repelled I was when he said his favorite bar was “tried and true classic” Acme. The second, and the more important, was that the lighting at The River was non-existent. It felt like we were inside of a brain or the entry hallway to a haunted house. I could barely see my own hands let alone his un-ironic “I love New York” shirt. It was not love.
That's because (according to advice from a friend) in order to fall in love you need two things—good timing and good lighting. Both equally metaphorical and entirely realistic. And really, how was I meant to fall in love with a man whose face I couldn't see?
Regardless, I started to use the concept of time and light to think about why things in my past fell apart or why romantic endeavors never took off in the first place. My friends and I had first discussed this theory over a chilled bottle of something at Fort Greene’s hottest club Rhodora this past summer.
The timing piece felt like it could be obvious. “Timing is everything” we say about apartments and leaving our jobs and falling in love. The wrong timing can overshadow any brilliant connection (like when a global pandemic stopped my long-distance relationship dead in its tracks). We discussed whether timing was synonymous with being ready, with having space after certain break-ups. Maybe we could find good timing when the cosmos were in a good mood and our jobs weren’t stressful and our apartments were where we wanted them to be. Right?
Lighting on the other hand—the way we see others and ourselves—fosters romance and energy. In the wrong lighting, attraction fails or fades but in the right lighting, well that’s where the magic happens. And while I am certainly not an expert at love, at the crux of my two big girl jobs—interiors pub Domino and sex brand maude—is mood lighting. That and hardwood.
In May, I started seeing a great lighting/ terrible timing man. We met where any two single Brooklyn-based millennials could meet: a wine rave run by sommeliers who are also DJs. It was the start of summer, and there I was wearing a tiny little top with my best friend holding a bottle of pet nat in a wine bib around my neck.
We chatted in line for the bathroom, by the time I got back to my group, we had already kissed (listen, the lighting was very good). And to be fair, it was all you can drink wine and the first nice day of the year. To make matters more interesting, we had matched on Hinge the day before but didn’t recognize each other (kismet, the start to a romcom, fate, etc etc). I only realized the next day when I went on the app in an attempt to diversify my portfolio. I was trying to be careful. You have to put eggs in multiple baskets, I could hear my council of friends saying. He was recently out of a relationship and I was planning to spend the summer running around the country having just quit my job of 3.5 years. The timing was not so ideal, but I could be casual, surely.
A few months and one break up later, I ran into my friend Sarah Natkins—who knows a thing or two about good lighting (take her client Anna Karlin for example, some of the chicest lighting this city has to offer). I had just finished the first season of this newsletter—having sublet my apartment so I could escape to Vermont and California. I wrote about leaving. It ended with that guy, didn’t it? She asked. Could you tell from my tone? I asked. She could.
When I got to Vermont, tail between my legs, I began to pour over my mother’s journals that I took from her house when she died. The first passage in Summer 1993 read:
So, dancing is my birthright I guess, born to dance. So the grey haired man took me by surprise and I was surprised by my response. I don't even remember what I said or he said but we left the floor at a certain point and that was the end of the evening. There, just end. Then drive. Talk. drive. Park. walk. Keys. Lights. Lights out. And then after nearly a year of waiting. A year of stopping. Making time. I followed my desire and his desire and got my wish which is the sleeping and waking up with another close by.
Lights. Lights out. She had carefully chronicled the years between her divorce and my conception, an odd parallel to my own desire to tell stories about love and dating and sex.
My mother, the eloquent ballerina-turned-world traveler-turned-college professor that she was, was a romantic. She chased the light, as many of us often do, creating a world rich in beauty and experience but lacking a little bit of reality (read: a creator of good lighting with wildly unpredictable timing). Take me for example, I was a wrinkle in the timeline, a happy accident. Because of this, I did not learn about the importance of timing from my mother—in fact I learned about how to embrace spontaneity from her and how to find light in the darkness (and I guess, to wear condoms). We also shared a desire to seek out people that felt like home.
When I dated a longtime friend from college right before the start of the pandemic, timing was finally on our side. We were both single, relatively untethered, interested in trying something we had talked about for years. But it was, by all accounts, a disaster. It was long-distance, which maybe was our first mistake. He hated New York, he hated the bars I took him to, finding no joy in the piña coladas at Commodore or the light-up dance floor at Night Moves. Even in my favorite lighting, it was somehow wrong. Even when our calendars finally seemed to line up, we severely misjudged what putting our friendship into a new light would look like. Timing, it seemed, would not be enough.
As I pieced through my mother’s own lost loves in her journals this summer, it was hard not to think of him. It was all wrapped up in my mother’s death and our friends and my relationship to a city where my family was. The grief was heavy.
In my reflections after a summer away—having attended four weddings and spending a month in Vermont and California each—I knew my period of grieving bad timing and bad lighting needed to end.
I immediately painted my bedroom a dark purpley-red (a sort of haircut for home type change). Once the paint dried and I dragged my bed back in, I slept better than I had in months. The perfect mix of being on the road and rejection had taken hours of sleep from me. My mother and I share some of the same modes of thinking, and while I slept better with someone in my bed it felt like a triumph to sleep soundly alone.
I will date in 2024 I said. Instead, I focused on a physical manifestation of this newsletter which launched in Casa Magazine and design shops Yowie & Big Night in October. Plus, I’d be spending nearly a month at the end of the year in Japan. In the new year, there would be fresh lighting, the opportunity to find better timing.
While I was on the almost twelve-hour flight to Tokyo, I redrew the layout to my apartment—I tend to find catharsis in floor plans. On the long trains while traveling between cities, I’d sit on facebook marketplace, noting my severe lack of good lighting fixtures while explaining to sellers that I’d be back in 3 weeks if they could just hold what I was hoping to buy.
I found myself in the city of paper lanterns dreaming of the crappy lighting in my own life—reflecting on the Peter Pan at the dark bar who was back with his ex-girlfriend or the man at the wine rave who who I later learned had gotten engaged to someone he met the month before he met me. I could only laugh (engaged? I’ve never felt younger).
Upon returning, I was talking with a guy friend of mine about his lamps. I much prefer overhead lighting—there’s just one switch. I was speechless, this seemed like a metaphor about the male brain that I wasn’t ready to unpack. But then we got them all on one automated app, and of course it's better, he said. I’m surely paraphrasing, but it seems you can create your own ideal light.
I then sent $500 to a man on facebook marketplace sightunseen for the light that now hangs above my dining room table. The light was better, more balanced—hopeful almost, dim in the evenings as it should be. Ripe for mistakes and mischief.
With all the fixtures set, could I light my way to perfect timing?
let there be lights.
A quick guide to some lights I love.
Seeing red: I’m always so inspired by In Common With—a lighting studio in BK. I stopped in my tracks when I saw this at Future Perfect over the summer.
Chrome hearts, heart Chrome: I was with my friend Madeline (who is the designer behind Byline) and she had this unreal CB2 lamp.. If I didn’t already have a chrome light fixture, I’d buy it. It sort of reminded me of the Flos one that the design bros are loving right now.
Queen Anna: Anna Karlin is known for two things—wearing an empire-waist dress like no one I’ve ever seen and her iconic design practice. I went to an opening at her studio, where we were greeted with French fries on silver trays. She has these gorgeous lantern sconces that I still think about.
Sheer madness: I was wondering around Long Island City when my husband* Grant was in town from Portland. I love an itinerary day so we hopped from Noguchi museum to Moma PS1 with a quick stop at Xian Famous Foods before going to one of my favorite spots for design: Somerset House. My not-but-could-be-cousin Khiry Sullivan showed me my favorite lighting fixture I had seen in recent memory, made of thin woven plastic (center in the above image). Felt very menswear inspired, and a little like these from Ladies and Gentleman. Maybe one day I’ll own it.
Paper towns: My longtime lantern is an oversized number from Pearl River Market—it was maybe $30. Noguchi look without the Noguchi price. Then I bought a hand folded paper lantern from an artist Lucy Pullen for my bedroom. In Japan, I stayed at the Ace Kyoto and was awestruck by the HUGE custom lanterns they had designed for their dining room by a local manufacturer that has been around since the 1700s.
Others to look at for inspo: Human Home, this one from Lichen, a School House number, AND for your boob light covering needs Tulip is your friend.
sloppy secondhand: winter recap.
Each issue I’ll pick a favorite vintage spot & a local watering hole—maybe you’ll find a new-to-you sofa or a new-to-you man. All I can promise is perhaps some promiscuity and a little credit card debt.
Nearly six months is a long time to recap my drinking and vintage escapades. But here are some highlights.
In the realm of vintage my favorites at Renew Finds JUST opened their new Greenpoint space. Go check them out and then head to Taqueria Ramirez for tacos.
My girls at Margot opened a wine bar called Heaven and Earth in Greenpoint. I also had an EXCELLENT martini with a gilda on it at Ernesto’s. The vesper at the newly opened Tusk is one for the books. And the mini martini at Lord’s was a perfect damp January treat.
shop girl.
I shop more than I date, here is everything I bought recently:
A new gown—last year around this time, I was at Sincerely Tommy and bought a two piece red leather suit. This year, I’ve taken the next step, buying a Proenza Runway gown… listen, sometimes you are helping your best friend shop for rehearsal dinner looks and something is 85% off. Not on the bingo card but not mad about it.
Books in two moods—My friend Ama, who is one of the most well-read people I know and also a VERY talented beauty editor at Coveteur, gifted me Molly by Blake Butler. It chronicles the suicide of the author’s wife. It is shattering and changing the way I want to tell my own narrative of grief. On a lighter note, I was listening to How Long Gone’s interview with Kyle Chayka. His new book Filterworld is about how the algorithm shifted and diluted culture. We are clones, basically.
A shampoo replacement—My hair has its own personality thanks to my root doctor Monica and the Crown Affair cleansing scrub which has replaced shampoo for me entirely and given me wildly shiny hair.
Merch—I met my now friend Joyce Lee, who helmed Madewell’s design for over a decade, when Domino shot her apartment in 2018. She has the best taste (seriously follow her for the inspo she sources) and started making these bags. My LAOR bag is my new go-to for running around the city.
Cover girls and boys—co-founder of Lichen, Jared Blake is on the COVER of Japanese design publication Popeye and the new magazine by Joshua Glass (with contribs like Beverly Nguyen and Sophia Roe) Family Style did a design issue that has Chloe Sevigny and Michele Lamy on the covers.
Food & Memories—I went to a talk at my friend Conway’s store Hudson Wilder for the launch of Atelier September for Apartmento, author and chef Fredrick talked about how when you add olive oil to anything it gives it soul. I was sold.
